This is actually something I've thought about before and common sense tells me that having adsense on your site should benefit you. Google is about making money and adsense does that for them. The more adsense pages in the top spots of the rankings, the more money google makes.

Look at the quality of the links. Just because he has fewer links than yours doesn't mean you should outrank him. Plus, it is preferable to have as many different linking domains as possible rather than footer links

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